One Response to “ Jonathan Brown – Slavery in Islam ”

1. helen says:

   July 14, 2023 at 7:56 pm

   Are you a historian? You obviously have little knowledge of Western/ NW European history before Early Modern Europe.

   From the BBC GCSE history revision website:)

   “The Norman conquerors and their descendants, who controlled England for centuries, had a huge impact on our laws, land ownership and system of government which is still felt today. They invaded and colonised England and organised the fastest and deepest transfer of land and wealth in the country’s history. Within a few years of William the Conqueror becoming king, over 40 per cent of the land was in the hands of a small number of people, all of whom were foreign.

   The Normans abolished slavery after information collected for the Domesday Book had revealed that about 10 per cent of the people were enslaved. The way we name ourselves also comes from the Normans because they introduced the system of surnames to show people’s occupations or where they had migrated from.”

   ADDITIONALLY: It is known by every schoolgirl that Charlemagne introduced laws against slavery in his 8th C Franco/German Empire, just as the Islamic Empire was starting to get going!

   What you say, based on formal legal slavery and religion/ philosophy’s interaction with it, is not correct. Many people (both men and women) involved in early monasticism in 1st Millennium Christian Europe opposed slavery and made this clear in the donations of their land and money to the church.

   Please note, I am not a Christian. I am aware you might not like his work on Islam, but please read Tom Holland’s Dominion (it is not about Islam, nor does it have any “propaganda” purpose as far as know.)

   The law and social reality most certainly ebbed and flowed over the centuries. You will note I leave in my BBC excerpt the comments on Norman land theft. Serfdom, which was widespread as a consequence of that invasion of England, was also common in other European Countries. Early Western Europe (and this continued until the advent of industry) was ill suited to a slave system because it was not so fertile it could not sustain a large, unwilling workforce who would not die to protect their family. The population fall in the wake of the Black Death only exacerbated this fundamental problem.

   And, no, serfs, were NOT ever “the same” in their rights. For instance, if a serf left their village for 12 months and went to a town (and lived), they were then free, as is recorded by the English law and wills of the period.
   This was not – as far as I can see – the case with Arab/ Muslim or Transatlantic slaves who if recovered, were still slaves forever, unless freed by their “masters.”

   The ideas I outline above had been percolating a long time before the 1600s, let alone the Enlightenment, and can be attributed to Christian thought.

   Also, they were not just percolating in the West! Some scholars in the late Ottoman Empire said the same thing – let alone the Plantation slaves themselves, lest we forget them. It is just lucky that some of the British at the time of that momentum (early 1800s) saw the crime at a time when the country had the power to enforce its ruling on the rest of the world. And lets not forget how hard the Muslim rulers fought against it.

   As to what other religions, eg Buddhism, said about slavery (not to mention the original North American/ Australian/ South American people), I have no idea, but I suspect it was a little more than nothing.

   In short, I’m here for the nuance, but you have to speak to the nuance on both sides or you just look like a Salafi mouthpiece.

   Reply

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